The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has concluded a months-long strategic reorganization, culminating in a significant restructuring of its operations and a reduction in its workforce. This pivotal moment marks the implementation of the EF’s updated Mandate and Treasury Management Policy, signaling a sharpened focus on the foundational development and long-term sustainability of the Ethereum protocol. The reorganization has resulted in a more streamlined organizational structure, designed to enhance execution capabilities for critical tasks ahead. However, this strategic realignment has also led to the departure of 54 colleagues, approximately 20% of the EF’s workforce, who are expected to continue contributing to the Ethereum ecosystem in various capacities.
This comprehensive restructuring aims to equip the EF with the precise structure, targeted activities, and dedicated personnel required to navigate the complex and evolving landscape of Ethereum development. The new organizational framework is built around distinct "clusters," each dedicated to specific domains of work essential for Ethereum’s continued growth and security. These clusters include the Protocol Layer, Access Layer, User Layer, Community Layer, and Institutional Layer, complemented by dedicated clusters for Operations and Management support. This division of labor is intended to foster specialized expertise and optimize resource allocation towards the EF’s core objectives.
Background and Chronology of the Reorganization
The impetus for this significant organizational overhaul stems from the Ethereum Foundation’s commitment to adapt and evolve in response to the increasing maturity and complexity of the Ethereum ecosystem. Over the past several years, Ethereum has transitioned from a nascent project to a global platform supporting a vast array of decentralized applications and financial services. This growth necessitates a more sophisticated and targeted approach to development, research, and ecosystem support.
The process leading to today’s announcement was initiated several months ago, involving extensive strategic planning, review of existing mandates, and the formulation of new operational policies. Key milestones in this process included the development and adoption of the EF’s Mandate, which clearly outlines the organization’s core responsibilities and long-term vision for Ethereum, and the implementation of a new Treasury Management Policy. This policy provides a framework for prudent financial stewardship, ensuring the EF’s resources are allocated effectively and sustainably to support its mission. The organizational changes announced today are the direct result of translating these strategic documents into actionable operational realities.
The New Structure: A Deeper Dive into EF Clusters
The newly established structure emphasizes a domain-specific approach, recognizing that different areas of Ethereum development require distinct strategies, accountability frameworks, and internal organizational designs. The EF has outlined seven key clusters:
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Protocol Layer: This cluster inherits the EF’s foundational legacy and its paramount responsibility for ensuring Ethereum delivers on its core promise of scaling self-sovereignty. Its primary objective is to fortify and scale the Ethereum protocol itself. The Protocol Layer is tasked with ensuring that Ethereum continues to uphold its defining properties: censorship and capture resistance, open-source principles, privacy, and security as non-negotiable guarantees. This cluster prioritizes the advancement of the core protocol without compromising these self-sovereignty tenets. Its work is not driven by marketability or short-term financial interests, nor by the aim to transform Ethereum into a centrally controlled financial conduit. Instead, its focus is on making Ethereum more resilient to corruption and capture, and more reliable when counterparties falter, platforms censor, governments overreach, or intermediaries extract value. This involves the safe execution of network upgrades (forks), the reduction of unnecessary complexity, the minimization of trusted dependencies, the defense of the transaction pipeline against predatory MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) and privileged order flow, and the acceleration of long-horizon research such as post-quantum cryptography, zkEVMs (Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines), and L1 (Layer 1) privacy solutions, translating them into protocol changes that preserve and enhance self-sovereignty at scale.
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Access Layer: This cluster addresses the critical need for individuals to practically access and utilize the "CROPS" properties (Censorship Resistance, Openness, Privacy, and Security) that Ethereum aims to provide. Its mandate is to make self-sovereignty accessible, legible, and survivable across essential user actions: reading the chain, transacting, proving, delegating, and exiting. These functionalities must be robust for end-users and increasingly for the agents acting on their behalf. This requires the ability to access current state, historical data, and related information without relying on intermediaries that cannot be independently verified. Users must be able to transact privately and without fear of censorship, with transaction outcomes that are either guaranteed or fail cost-free if predefined conditions are not met. As more functionality shifts to agents, users must retain control, granting and revoking authority through bounded permissions, and maintaining custody of their intents rather than exposing them to third parties. The interfaces, from hardware to front-end applications, must be verifiable, comprehensible, and recoverable, regardless of user familiarity or technical expertise. The guiding principle of the Access Layer is the "zero option": for every intermediated path, a credible intermediary-free alternative must exist and remain accessible. Tactically, this involves identifying opportunities to enhance CROPS properties within existing infrastructure and acknowledging the necessity of credible alternatives when economic incentives naturally lead to aggregation, identification, and control.
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User Layer: This cluster ensures that the EF’s work remains grounded in the needs and interests of users and organizations that rely on self-sovereign Ethereum applications. It aims to broaden the adoption of such tools and norms across the ecosystem. The User Layer assists the EF in identifying the most critical capabilities, the most serious failure modes, and the acceptable trade-offs required for widespread adoption. Its responsibilities include defining user segments, developing personas, creating educational materials, conducting use-case research, and evaluating the impact of EF initiatives. The objective is not for the EF to become a product development studio, but rather to ensure that decisions made at the Protocol and Access Layers are informed by the realities faced by current and potential users, practical constraints, and measurable outcomes for self-sovereignty.
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Community Layer: This cluster defines how the EF engages with the world, both within and beyond the Ethereum ecosystem. Its primary role is to clearly articulate the EF’s values and how they differentiate from speculative "zero-sum" financial crypto, "corpo-compromised" crypto, and the often-inert, status-quo-preserving segments of the non-profit sector that can be vulnerable to geopolitical manipulation. The EF is committed to maximizing its community value by maintaining independence from such counterproductive entanglements. Furthermore, this cluster cultivates relationships with communities outside the immediate crypto space. Self-sovereignty finds natural allies in open-source software, secure and local-first hardware and software development, privacy and cryptography research and advocacy, civil liberties movements, decentralized web initiatives, and public-interest technology organizations. The Community Layer works to foster fruitful, organic, and high-quality intersections between Ethereum and these broader fields.
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Institutional Layer: This cluster spearheads the EF’s engagement with institutions that shape how end-users interact with Ethereum through intermediated channels. This includes financial institutions involved in consumer payments, insurance, and other services. It also encompasses non-financial enterprises in sectors such as manufacturing, social media, publishing, and various other industries. Additionally, it covers government applications and collaborations with universities and other non-profit organizations. The overarching goal is to champion the creation of successful integrations of Ethereum and cryptographic technologies that maximize CROPS properties and the guarantees they offer to both institutions and users. These guarantees include fair and accurate execution, data portability, practical exit strategies, enhanced privacy for all actors, robust data authenticity, and improved mechanisms for detecting and preventing misconduct. The EF posits that many enterprises, governments, and non-profits will recognize the benefits of serving users in ways that bolster self-sovereignty while still securing the assurances necessary to create value or fulfill their missions. Ethereum and cryptographic technologies are seen as key enablers of this paradigm shift. Beyond direct engagement, the Institutional Layer will contribute by developing and disseminating best practices, standards, reference architectures, and educational materials to facilitate institutional adoption. Concurrently, this cluster collaborates with academics and allied advocacy organizations globally to ensure a precise understanding of Ethereum’s current capabilities and future potential. It also monitors and responds to policy and regulatory developments that could impact Ethereum’s commitment to self-sovereign use and its core principles of censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security.
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Operations Cluster: This cluster is dedicated to the internal functioning and efficiency of the Ethereum Foundation. It ensures that the organization has the necessary infrastructure, tools, and processes to support the work of the other clusters. This includes areas such as human resources, finance, legal, IT, and administrative functions.
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Management and Direct Support Cluster: This cluster comprises the leadership team and the individuals directly supporting management functions. They are responsible for strategic direction, overall organizational health, and ensuring alignment across all EF initiatives.
Supporting Departing Colleagues
The decision to part ways with 54 colleagues was acknowledged as difficult but necessary for the EF to achieve its strategic objectives. The foundation has committed to providing comprehensive support to those leaving the organization. This support package includes a severance offering that is the higher of one month’s pay per year of service at the EF or the amount mandated by local jurisdiction, mirroring previous support provided to departing staff.
In addition to severance pay, departing employees will receive transition support. This includes assistance in finding new roles within the broader Ethereum ecosystem and a modest transition grant to cover individual expenses such as career coaching. The EF expressed profound gratitude for the talent, dedication, and time contributed by these individuals to Ethereum during their tenure. The organization anticipates continuing to collaborate with many of them as they find new avenues for contribution within the wider ecosystem.
Looking Ahead: A Leaner, More Focused EF
The Ethereum Foundation emerges from this restructuring leaner, more focused, and better positioned to execute its critical mission. The organization plans to provide further details in the coming weeks and months regarding how its work will evolve and how the broader ecosystem can best engage with the new, refined structure. This strategic realignment signifies a commitment to the long-term health, security, and decentralized ethos of the Ethereum protocol, ensuring it continues to serve as a robust platform for innovation and self-sovereignty in the years to come. The move underscores a maturing ecosystem that demands specialized expertise and strategic resource allocation to meet its ambitious goals.
